A Vulcan short story
by Tuxinomee
Summary: Not exacty a short story, but short. How the Vulcans really made first contact with humans...


Homo sapiens sapiens  
  
In the vast extension of the milky way, there is a desert planet called Vulcan. Their intelligent inhabitants are human-like beings, directed by a philosophy of logic. Surak their philosophical leader is awaiting the commander of an expedition-team sent to a planet, on which they have discovered another intelligent humanoid race.  
  
"Live long and prosper, my dear!", Surak greets T'Pau with great interest, "I hope the expedition was interesting. Now what do you have to report on the specie living on the blue planet?"  
  
"Live long and in peace", T'Pau greets back, "the ape-like beings living on this planet call themselves humans and they call their planet earth. But actually they use about some 3000 to 5000 different languages and accents. So there are many names for this planet."  
  
"What did you say, they use up to 5000 different terms just to name the same thing? This ridiculous!", Surak frowns.  
  
"Well that's what we've found out!", T'Pau replies, "Yet they only use some of them. On the continent they call North America for example, they mainly use the words fuck you, bullshit, crap, ass, damn, bucks, blow and exclamations like: yo, ey, man, ok.  
I've been to a suburb called Harlem. When a customer went there into a shop, he just said: Fuck you, man! And the owner of the shop replied: Ey yo, fuck you too!"  
  
"What does fuck you mean?", Surak asks.  
  
"I don't really know!", T'Pau admits, "but obviously it's a very friendly and polite gesture. Otherwise they wouldn't greet each other this way!"  
  
"Hm, logical!", Surak nods, "And they use only those little few words to communicate? That's amazing!"  
  
"Well in North America, they obviously do! The customer just had to say: Ey man, I wanna have that fucking stuff over there not this bullshit here! And he got what he wanted!"  
  
"Amazing and practical!", Surak repeats, "perhaps we should add this distinctiveness to our own!"  
  
"But then something strange followed", T'Pau interrupts, "that customer pulled pieces of paper out and handed it over to the shop owner and got a long iron stick in return! As a matter of fact I've seen dozens of humans swapping all kinds of goods against those pieces of paper!"  
  
By saying this she pulls out a piece of green paper showing a very ugly human head in the center of it with white locks and hands it over to Surak.  
  
"They call it one buck or dollar! But the strangest thing is that the customer pointed his new stick towards the owner and then there was loud bang! He killed him!"  
  
"They have got a very barbaric and very weird form of economy!", Surak frowns.  
  
"Yes, indeed", T'Pau agrees, "And then the customer began taking all the papers out of the desk until he spotted me. Very strange, they kill each other just to collect paper! Well, then I had to stun him with my mental neutralizer for he pointed his weapon at me."  
  
"Weird", Surak keeps on saying.  
  
"Well then suddenly" ,T'Pau continued, "some humans in black clothes rushed into the shop and shouted: Drop your weapon, you are under arrest. Then they took me and the black man to a metal box on wheels after they had beat him up and politely asked us to get into it by using the f-word again. So I did. But as we began to move, I smelt a terrible odor coming from under the metal box. My scanner told me that the air around me was containing an unhealthy amount of carbon monoxide."  
  
"Perhaps they breathe oxygen and carbon monoxide?", Surak asks.  
  
"Possibly," T'Pau replies, "one of the men even put a small stick to his mouth and breathed through it. The smoke coming out of his mouth also contained carbon monoxide. Maybe that human can only breathe carbon monoxide and oxygen would be poisonous to him. Maybe there are even two different kinds of humans. One breathes oxygen, the other one carbon monoxide. Anyway that customer in the shop did not breathe carbon monoxide and he was black and the humans who arrested me were white and treated that black man very badly as he woke up.  
Perhaps that's why they kill each other because they breathe different gases. That's why the black killed the shop owner, who was white and also smoked on a small stick, you know. The black simply tried to protect himself because the shop owner breathed gas that was poisonous for the black man."  
  
"Well, what happened then," Surak demanded. "Well, I could hardly breathe, so I asked the men through a small window if I could get out. They grinned at me very friendly and said: Of coooourse, any time you want! So as we stopped for a while I simply beamed myself through the wall. I continued my expedition by taking a small stroll through the streets. There were a lot of humans of all kinds of colors rushing past. Some of them smoked carbon monoxide others didn't. They are all constantly talking, not to each other but into devices which are similar to our communicators. I greeted some of them. They did not respond until I said "fuck you".  
I went past a so called magazine shop. That's a place where humans receive orders from a man called Murdoch, who owns most of the major magazines on earth. These lectures tell the humans what to do. There are many about politics. On earth politics means that a single human says something, often about how to get more papers for his people, and then many others say that he is wrong. Sometimes the people throw food at the speaker to award him or they kill him if doesn't perform so well. Or they write about humans hunting other dark-skinned humans who have a long black beard and wear a piece a white cloth around their head.  
Others report about those smelly metal boxes on wheels I have mentioned before. Most of them show nude or half nude human females on their front page.  
It's fascinating, it occurs to me that humans are constantly thinking about how to reproduce themselves. Humans take great care that they don't overstep a specific bodyweight. They call it attractiveness and many humans go on a so called diet to reach a lower weight, while at the same time they often eat food containing a large amount of protein and grease.  
Obviously being thin is their way of showing beauty. One of my crew members reported that the humans living on the continent called Africa are most beautiful. They are so thin that you can see their skeleton structure and even the children take diets to look attractive. But many of them die just to look attractive. It's weird."  
  
"No, it is logical. Every specie aspires to ensure it's own survival", Surak adds cunningly, "that's why the humans are so desperate to be attractive.  
  
"It's not that easy", T'Pau throws in, "As a matter of fact. The planet is already overpopulated. And many humans have sex not to reproduce themselves, but just because they want it. One of my crew members who investigated a region called La France even reported about humans of the same sex who seemed to be reproducing themselves over even with animals."  
  
"But why should they do that? What's the sense of it all if they don't reproduce?", Surak looks at T'Pau questioning and even a bit too astonished for a Vulcan. "They call it fun," T'Pau explains raising an eyebrow, "most humans work all day to collect papers and then usually at night they have fun."  
  
"What is fun?", Surak also raises an eyebrow.  
  
"They have fun when they laugh. They say they are enjoying it. Well, I know what you are thinking. This doesn't make sense. Our people think constantly about life and how to improve ourselves. But humans obviously just want to have fun.  
Some of them have sex, others go into buildings called discos and consume a chemical compound they call alcohol. It highly reduces their mental capabilities.  
First I didn't understand it, so I decided to try it out myself. At first the liquid tasted disgusting, but the more I drank from it the more relaxing the whole world around me became.  
Then one of the male humans offered me some more alcohol and said that I was the hottest bird he has even seen in his life. I didn't understand, what he meant. But he seemed to be quite friendly so I got involved in a conversation. I'm afraid that was a bad idea because I already had too much alcohol and my head was spinning. I also must have told him who I really was, because he started to call me T'Pau and asked me if the planet Vulcan was on the US West-Coast. He himself came from a country called Canada, where you can find more cows, some kind of animal, than humans."  
  
"That was very unwise of you, T'Pau", Surak said reproachfully, "you have endangered our whole mission!"  
  
"I apologize," T'Pau said dropping her head, "I just wanted to understand their culture. Well, after five shots of an alcohol mixture they call whisky, the man asked me if I wanted to dance. Now, dancing is some kind of a human sport, where you have to jump around, nod your head and twist you arms according to a rhythmic noise they call pop music. Then the man offered me some more whisky and the last thing I remember is that I woke up in a small apartment the next morning beside him."  
  
"T'Pau, you didn't have an intimate relationship with that alien did you, because otherwise I would have to put you under quarantine!", Surak looked at his officer with an expression the reader would almost interpret as worry.  
  
"No, of course not. I'm sure we didn't do anything," T'Pau responds, but flushing a bit. She quickly adds: "Well, after 30 sunrises my crew and I returned to our ship. I'm glad to say that everyone of us has gathered intriguing information of the continents we went to. The first thing we did, after the reunion is to greet each other in the different native languages of the cultures we visited, like: Fuck you, Va t'en imbécile, Verpiss dich du Arschloch, Ta ma de, Sick de Lan."  
  
"Well, as a conclusion", Surak demanded, "what's your recommendation? Should we make an official first contact with the humans?"  
  
"No, no, I don't think they are ripe," T'Pau answers after a long pause, "They are not very logical and so weird. And they are not tolerant. Actually alien species have a negative connotation on earth as they show it in their media, although their simplified language is really amazing. But I think we should first make contact with the Marsians living deep under the planet Mars nearby." 


End file.
